A response to the argument that you could win the abortion debate by allowing only women to vote on it, as more women than men favor restricting abortion. 

   This sounds like a good tactic but sets a terrible precedent. It trades a dubious short term win for an unknowable long term cost.

    If more women than men favor restricting abortion, then that should be something people talk about. The public narrarive says that abortion is a women’s issue, that it is something women as a whole are for, and the fight against it is about men trying to control women a bodies. But if it’s actually the case that it’s men who favor abortion and women who are more concerned about it, then that should be a talking point.

    Maybe the current state of the debate is a battle between some women who want it vs some other women who don’t, and men don’t care or largely feel obligated to support one or the other group. Maybe some men do care, but for purely selfish reasons. Maybe others also care, for purely moral reasons. But if the deepest crux of the battle, the largest group opposed, is women, on what’s supposedly a women’s issue, then clearly the whole debate needs to be publicly reframed.

    One of the biggest political weapons of the pro-abortion movement is their argument that it’s not really about abortion, per se, it’s about women’s rights. And so you can’t be against abortion without being against women’s rights, and therefore against women, is their claim. And that helps deflect some of the heat that comes from arguing against people who want you to stop killing babies (at least that’s how they see them). 

    But even if it’s highly relevant that women are, in fact, greatly divided on this issue, reframing the terms of rhe debate and struggle, that doesn’t mean that it would be a good idea to redefine how we engage with, vote on, and decide important moral issue and policy decisions for our nation. 

   As another aside, having only women vote on abortion as an issue concedes one of the most key points of the abortion movement. It cedes the territorial claim, that abortion and pregnancy are simply a “women’s issue”. That men have no essential stake in the lives of their children. That the children, the unborn themselves, with society as their proxy, have no claim either. That it’s just a women’s issue, for them to decide on internally.

    You’re betting your ability to engage this issue on the fact that more women overall would favor more restrictions, so why not exploit that and stack the deck? But what if sentiment shifts, just slightly? Then there’s no way to bring in other stakeholders, including fathers and society as a whole, because you already cut them out and made this very serious issue nothing but an internal matter for women to decide, with reference to nothing and no one else but their own interests. I think that’s giving abortion activists exactly what they would want. 

-The discussion continued for a while, and a fellow named Tim said, “We need a revolution every 20 years just to keep government honest. – Thomas Jefferson. Tear down the legal system.”-

    Tim, that’s a misquote. That’s from a famous letter where he’s talking about how the world press has exaggerated the supposed anarchy and rebellion taking place in the new country of America. He was explaining that it was really just a few people in Massachusetts, and there had been none of the widespread chaos many continental critics had predicted for the new political system. He even applauded the passion of the rebels, being pleased that at least they aren’t indifferent. But he also thought they were wrong, and that the solution waa pardon the rebels, to correct their misapprehensions, and pacify them.

   Jefferson wasn’t advocating rebellion every twenty years, he was praising the fact that in the twenty years since the US was founded, they’ve only really had one small rebellion of a few folks in one little state, which is impressive, since so many people thought the country wouldn’t hang together at all. He was defending America against its critics abroad and extolling how peaceful it had largely been and advocating a peaceful solution to the rebellion. 
    It’s certainly true that Jefferson was OK with a little unrest, and with a few people being killed in the process of figuring out the new nation (the rebels, killed by the government) because thats a normal part of political engagement and inventing a radical new kind of government built on democracy. He basically said that the cost of having an engaged populace is that a few people will die now and then as the price of a free people.

   Jefferson was coming out of the revolution, and had a revolutionary attitude toward bloodshed. But wasn’t actively advocating to overthrow the government. He was genuinely pleased that there had only been one small upset in twenty years. And he advocated for the government to reeducate and pacify the rebels. That’s not the same thing as the bald claim that you should overthrow the legal system or have a revolution every twenty years. Under such conditions, nothing would survive and no one could succeed. 
    The American system is revolutionary in its ability to balance stability and revolution. Other forms of government were well-known to be far more stable than democracy. But America went for democracy, even though it was less stable. But instability itself wasn’t America’s strength. It was the price of freedom. And if it gets out of hand it can bring down the nation. Even Jefferson knew that. 

    Jefferson was at pains in this letter to disabuse his reader of the notion that a democratic America would mean a continual, chaotic, neverending revolution and fighting amongst the people. That was the argument the foreign press was using to disparage America and argue for the superiority of the ancient monarchies, aristocracies, and oligarchies of the old world. America isn’t in continual chaotic  revolution and shouldn’t be, he argued. Yes, there is revivification, engagement, disagreement, even a little chaos; but it is contained, controlled, and resolved through the mechanisms of the constitution. It isn’t just a perpetual revolution.

   You’re advocating for the bad version of exactly what Jefferson was at pains to say America wasn’t doing.